Pair of musical hacks use sensor arrays as keyboards

sensor-driven-musical-keyboards

This pair of musical keyboard hacks both use light to detect inputs. The pair of tips came in on the same day, which sparks talk of consipiracy theory here at Hackaday. Something in the weather must influence what types of projects people take on because we frequently see trends like this one. Video of both projects is embedded after the jump. On the left is a light-sensitive keyboard which … [Read more...]

The Nottingham Hackspace

nottinghack

Hackerspaces (or hackspace in this case) come in all shapes and sizes, from those just starting up, to some that are very impressively equipped. [Dominic] wrote in to tell us about the Nottingham Hackspace, which would fall solidly into the second category. We'd invite you to take a look at their intro video after the break, but be prepared to wish you lived near their location. If you do … [Read more...]

Dyson engineers’ hacks traverse robot obstacle course

2012-dyson-challenge

These guys are all engineers who are employed by Dyson. They're holding remote control creations made from Dyson parts. This time around the object of the challenge was to build a bot based on a the Dyson ball and race it through an obstacle course. This sort of thing is right up our alley, but unlike the last time Dyson engineers shrugged off the daily grind to hack their own hardware, this … [Read more...]

Portal gun hack approaches 1.5 million views. More fun hacks to come!

hacked portal gun

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZkApleQQpk&feature=player_embedded The quick and simple portal gun hack was published a little ver a week ago and has cleared almost 1.5 million views. This is just a taste of things to come as we plunge into creating more fun original content for hackaday. If you haven't yet, you should go subscribe to our youtube channel. We have many more … [Read more...]

Ask Hackaday: How about some model rocket hacks?

rockets

There's nothing like the smell of black powder in the morning, along with the excitement and burnt propellant in the air that comes after launching a model rocket. All those 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s kids out there may remember the classes of model rocket engines - generally A, B, C, and D sized engines used to push your cardboard tube with balsa fins skyward. A lot has changed in the world of … [Read more...]

Two software defined radio hacks from our resident SDR guru

radio

It seem [Balint] is becoming somewhat of a SDR guru around these parts; in the past few months, he's gotten a USB TV tuner receiver working with GNU Radio, started a software defined radio tutorial YouTube channel, and even used this project to listen in on conversations between airplanes and air traffic control. This time, [Balint] is back using this cheap USB TV tuner for radio direction … [Read more...]

Kitchen Hacks: Improving an espresso machine

coffeeeee

The heat sensor in [Cameron]'s espresso machine doesn't work very well. He sees some pretty crazy variations in temperature when pulling an espresso shot, and when the boiler is just sitting there the heater element will heat the water full-bore then shut off for a while. Since this is a pretty low bar from a control theory standpoint, [Cameron] decided on a PID makeover on his espresso … [Read more...]